Final Fantasy 7 Remake made it abundantly clear that Square Enix’s trilogy of FF7 remakes was going to have no qualms about deviating significantly from the original game’s storyline, but in the end, the trilogy is still going to link up with Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children, the animated CG movie set after the events of the original PS1 title.

The same was previously confirmed by director Tetsuya Nomura earlier this year, and in a recent interview with GamesRadar, producer Yoshinori Kitase reiterated that notion, confirming that the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy will “link up” with Advent Children, and that, collectively, its narrative deviations won’t be significant enough to not be able to line up with the movie’s events.

“We are finally going to link up with Advent Children, that is going to be part of canon,” Kitase said. “The overall storyline, the developments, will not go wildly out in a way that will not add up to Advent Children in the end. I don’t think anyone wanted that, that’s not what we’re looking to create here. [But] to make sure it doesn’t become stale and people know exactly where it’s going, [that it] doesn’t just follow the original word for word, we add in extra elements which add that little bit of doubt. Getting the right balance of that is so key. Ultimately, we’re not trying to change the Final Fantasy 7 story into something really different. The overall balance wouldn’t really allow for that anyway.”

Square Enix has recently also revealed a ton of new gameplay and combat-focused details for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, along with a host of new screenshots. The company has also confirmed that the action RPG will feature a new Dynamic difficulty mode that will use level scaling.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth launches on February 29, 2024 for PS5.